Sermons

Marja Hilfiker
My Finnish family experienced a silent spring around 1960.
I spent my childhood summers on a small farm in southern Finland, where we three children had a chance to keep house for ourselves, eat peas and carrots and new potatoes from the garden and berries from the woods, check the nets for fish and walk to a cow farm to buy milk. All spring we looked forward to the summer of freedom and closeness to nature.
Our favorite birds were the barn swallows that had made three sturdy clay nests under the eaves of the barn. Every spring the swallows came, darting around, briefly sprucing up their nests, and in a couple of weeks there was the chirping of the baby birds that the parents were busily feeding. They kept peeking out of the nest until it was time to test their wings.
Then one year around 1960, the swallows came as harbingers of summer as usual and settled in their nests. But, mysteriously, that year there was no chirping of the baby birds, no swallows darting about, only a perplexing silence. What had happened? Father took down one of the swallow nests and told us that the eggs inside were broken. Why? We couldn’t even really talk about it. I just remember the sadness of that silence. Several months later, Father came to us with the answer. “It’s the DDT that we have used in the garden. What happened is that the swallows ate the mosquitos that were carrying DDT, and it made the eggshells so thin that the eggs broke before hatching.

April 7, 2024
Texts:
John 20: 19-23
Acts 4:13
I want to begin my teaching by starting with the conclusion. It is actually found in the brochure that you have at your seat called “Faith in Action.” I will be focusing on page two of the brochure because these are the four tenets of our church. Which is to say that by coming to this church, you are expressing your strong belief that these four tenets are important and worth even the sacrificial love that may be required.

Early on as I was getting to know Bruce I asked him what his favorite quote was. He shared this one with me -- "I consecrate my life to truth" -- and told me that he had adopted it as his ethos, a personal motto, when he was thirteen years old, hitchhiking and reading the philosopher Rousseau. His naming of this shared ethos was the moment I knew we had a road to walk together. It was so fundamental to his, and our shared legacy, that it is the quote that will be inscribed on his headstone at Arlington National Cemetery.
The quote originates from a letter Rousseau wrote to a colleague and friend d’Alembert (Letter to d’Alembert, 1758) in which he is explaining a philosophical break with his friend, fellow philosopher, Diderot.[1] In this letter he declares that he has taken these words as his motto: Vitam impendere vero. In this announcement he shared that this invocation to truth serves, not just himself, but the “public good.” Our relationship with our truth can take many forms. Sometimes it comes easily. Sometimes more of a curiosity or aspiration. For Rousseau, it was in essence, a sacrifice of self. He realized it wasn’t about him; it was about a greater calling to being more deeply aligned with his inner knowing and, what I like to think, the divine. In the closing of his letter, he writes “Here is the only portrait of man, painted exactly according to nature and in all its truth [...] I want to show my peers a man in the full truth of nature; and that man shall be myself.”

Sally Ethelston
March 17, 2024
Texts:
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 51:1-13
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33
Lord, grant us grace to love what you command and to desire what you promise — that we may hear your voice. Señor, concédenos la gracia de amar lo que mandas y desear lo que prometes, para que podamos escuchar tu voz. Amen.
Good morning! My name is Sally, and I am here with Idalia and Don Valerio of the Vestry, and with Ana and Charles of San Mateo / St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Hyattsville, Maryland. Ana and I are members of the group working on what we call the bathroom project at San Mateo. It’s wonderful to be here with you.
It’s also great to be back in my old neighborhood! I lived for several years on Lanier Place and before that in several other places in Adams Morgan and Mt Pleasant — altogether, more than ten years between 1983 and 1995. And from 1997 to 2022, when I was ordained a Deacon here in the Diocese of Washington, I was a member of St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church, at 16th and Newton Streets.

Today I want to wrestle with 3 biblical concepts that I have felt are often confusing.
The concept of being “Born Again”
The Crucifixion and the cross. I found myself hesitating to put a cross on a Lenten quilt a few weeks ago, asking myself, what is the cross’s significance?
Eternal Life and the Kingdom of Heaven or the Heavenly world of God
John 3:1-21 has all of these main themes and they have shown themselves to me as interconnected.
“Born Again” is a cultural phenomenon where I am from, Memphis, TN. At least in the white churches I occasioned, once you believed through some change of your thought or belief, in that moment you were part of a community, you were given belonging, even privilege or access you had not had before. The result was effectively that you label yourself as a born-again Christian and claim membership to a church home whether you go or not. It is Southern conformity and access to belonging that does not necessitate Christian growth beyond your first conversion story. Black churches in Memphis may have some of the same phenomenon, but the facts are that Memphis is one of the cities in the poorest and blackest five states in our nation where I imagine that black churches are more about being places of safety and solidarity and communal resources in the face of active inequity regarding real life access to money, land, and physical safety.

Prologue: When I woke up this morning, I reflected on what I had left out of my teaching today, which was in the back of my mind as I was writing. So I decided to make this caveat before I speak on what I wanted to say on the subject of being “chosen.” I realize that historically, we Christians have taken on the mantle of “chosenness” from the Bible, wherein God calls the Hebrew people his chosen people. Seen as our inheritance, this has historically led to Christians – who took on this chosenness – perpetrating violence and oppression. This includes America’s early doctrine of “Manifest Destiny” which justified colonizing other peoples and instituting slavery at the very beginning of our country. It also includes this country identifying with the Nazis as Hitler rose to power, and the current rise of Christian Nationalism. I just wanted to acknowledge this history of chosenness that we should not be blind to. But it is not the subject of today’s teaching!

January 7, 2024
Text: Matthew 2:1-12
I grew up in the town of Pasaquina, El Salvador, observing the Roman Catholic tradition celebrating Epiphany on the sixth of January, twelve days after Christmas. When I was 12 years old, I began to be in both the Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church, and the Lutheran Church follows this same tradition. The Greek Orthodox church celebrates it on January 19, centered around the figure of the Patriarch of Constantinople.
Our tradition tells us of the three magi kings: Balthazar, who is often depicted as a king from Arabia or Ethiopia; Melchior, as king from Persia; and Gaspar, as a king from India. Their names originated in a long medieval tradition that "baptized" them with these names. They were guided by a star to worship the king of the Jews who had just been born in Bethlehem.
The word magi (or magician) is understood as a synonym for astrologer. Their offering the child gold, the metal of kings, meant recognizing Jesus as king of the Jews; incense, the offering of the gods, meant recognizing Jesus as divinity and his identity as son of God; and myrrh, a symbol of mortality, was a foreshadowing of his future sufferings, persecution and crucifixion. This persecution began soon afterwards with the slaughter, ordered by Herod, of all children born under two years old in the area of Bethlehem, seeking to kill the baby Jesus.

December 24, 2023
Last week I awakened around 5:30 am to get ready for work. After starting the day with coffee and prayer, I turned on the local news as background noise. A reporter caught my ear with this story:
Last week in the local news a little boy was filmed in the early morning welcoming the UPS man as he delivered a package to the 5-year-old boy's home. The UPS man drops off the package, and, as he returns to his truck, he hears the boys voice behind him saying “Thaaaank You!” He turns around with a smile, sees the young boy and says “You're welcome.” The young boy says it again; then he says it again, "Thaaaank you, I love you." The UPS man says "Awwww.” The young boy then runs to the UPS man with his arms wide open. The UPS man scoops him up into a big hug and says, “I love you too.”
A reporter having her camera man film the exchange asked the UPS man, "What did that moment feel like to you?"
He replies, "You never know the unexpected places where love will find us."
Enter Mary. She is visited by Gabriel, the angel, and this evokes an overwhelming feeling of fear. Gabriel, the angel calls her by name and says, “Do not be afraid.” Gabriel then explains the purpose of his presence:

December 17, 2023
Good morning! We are going to begin this reflection with an exercise called "shake out into stillness." Shake out into Stillness, and a second exercise called “laughing yoga,” provide wonderful opportunities for us to become more aware of what stillness and quiet are like.
Before we start, let’s practice laughing yoga for just a minute. Laughing yoga is new to me – it’s based on the premise that intentional voluntary laughter provides the same benefits as spontaneous laughter. So let’s practice by clapping our hands together - HA-HA-HA, and then HO-HO. If you are feeling especially daring you can clap hands with your neighbor on the HO-HO, but that’s up to you.
Ready?
We begin by shaking out one hand. Just imagine that you are shaking water off your fingertips. And now you can begin to invite the movement up into the elbow and then into the shoulder. It might feel a little different – most of us don’t normally move this way.
Turn your attention to your breath – are you still breathing? This would be a great time to deepen your breath.